In this lovely book (I had read to the students some time ago) a girl named Eva is struggling with a school writing assignment. Different people on her street give her writerly advice.
The same advice is useful for us during a revision process. Before we went on holidays the students had been working on their fictional narratives. On Tuesday I gave them their drafts to read, recommended to ask one of the greatest revision questions: "What if...?" and look for new possibilities in their drafts. This is a big question, and bold writers could change a character, a setting, a plot or the perspective they are writing from. It is a chance to turn the story upside down and make it fresh. This advice is a way to improve idea development.
The second advice from the book says: "Put poetry into your writing."
It doesn't mean writing your text in verses or inserting rhymes between paragraphs. It is meant to look closely at the word choice.
To help student to see and hear what poetic language looks and sounds like, we explored several short poems where poets have chosen simple and small or every day things and with careful word choice have created incredible images. The same literary devices can be used in narrative writing.
Isn't it beautiful when author writes about a dragonfly and calls is a sky ballerina? (metaphor)
Or what about this image "safety pin, closed, it sleeps on its side."? (personification)
Or "its tail out like a thin shrimp"? (simile)
These were poems (most of them by Valerie Worth) that did not have rhyme, but used the visual and sensory words and line breaks to express images.
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